In The Inward Circle, I provided a psychodynamic treatment of pathological lying and delusional paranoia and how former Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney is chronically disabled by it.  In the closing paragraph I wrote:

It is a sad commentary that the most we can expect from Mr. Cheney in the future is that he continues to be marginalized by history and sooner or later his presence will disappear, and only one person will believe what he believes and that one person is Dick Cheney himself.

At this point that I would like to focus on the role of the Vice President in evaluating the history of the George W. Bush administration.  I do this for a reason: there was never anything from a vice president that is remotely like it.   The photograph accompanying this article contains a link to a video pertaining to this topic.

In Angler:The Cheney Vice Presidency, a Pulitzer Prize-Winning series in the Washington Post published in 2008, the historical significance and magnitude of Vice President Cheney’s influence on the foreign and domestic policies of the United States government during the George W. Bush Administration are clearly presented and make for fascinating reading.  Here is an example: 

Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.  Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions.""What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part.

The whole world knew what the United States government perpetrated in total institutions like Abu Ghraib and the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, however now that Mr. Cheney and his president are no longer in office, darker, more sinister facts are emerging about places known as the “black sites.”  While their existence was highly classified, bits and pieces begin to emerge during the second term of George W. Bush.  The “black sites” are places where extraordinary rendition was performed, actions that only the President, Vice-President, Security of Defense and assets of the CIA were knowledgeable of and whose victims were considered “High Value Detainees” by the group just mentioned. 

Low ranking members of the Department of Justice, such as John Yoo, were involved at various points in time after the events of September 11, 2001, as they were asked to provide legal arguments for the existence of such locations and the covert conduct associated with them.  The argument had to be that the president in wartime could perform acts that were illegal, unconstitutional and not subject to congressional oversight.  Mr. Yoo served well in this role, perhaps too well for his future plans at UC Berkeley.  This is covered in detail in the previous citation.

So what occurred at “black sites” and what does it mean for the future of the former President, Vice President and the United States as a nation?  Let me say now that for the entities just mentioned what they did is was as bad as it could possibly be.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is now investigating what occurred in the “black sites.”   What exactly happened there?

Since November, George W. Bush and his administration have seemed to be rushing away from us at accelerating speed, a dark comet hurtling toward the ends of the universe. The phrase "War on Terror"—the signal slogan of that administration, so cherished by the man who took pride in proclaiming that he was "a wartime president"—has acquired in its pronouncement a permanent pair of quotation marks, suggesting something questionable, something mildly embarrassing: something past. And yet the decisions that that president made, especially the monumental decisions taken after the attacks of September 11, 2001—decisions about rendition, surveillance, interrogation—lie strewn about us still, unclaimed and unburied, like corpses freshly dead.

How should we begin to talk about this? Perhaps with a story. Stories come to us newborn, announcing their intent: Once upon a time... In the beginning... From such signs we learn how to listen to what will come. Consider:

I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4m x 4m [13 feet by 13 feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed....A man, unnamed, naked, strapped to a bed, and for the rest, the elemental facts of space and of time, nothing but whiteness.

I’m not going to tell the story found in this article, it is difficult enough to read it once but it should be read by everyone on the planet.  Questions come to mind, has anything like this happened before?  Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union?  One seriously wonders. Hitler and Stalin are remembered for mass murder, certainly not predominately for torture.

So if you read what happened in the name of the United States perpetrated by its government in its practice of “Extraordinary Rendition” there are few things in history that it can be compared to.  Members of the U.S. Military responsible for interrogation of POWs have always maintained that torture never provides actionable information.  What happened at the “black sites” goes so far beyond anything that could be imagined by someone with past or present associations with the military, like Colin Powell, for example, what went on there had to be kept absolutely secret.

It should be noted that some of those selected for “Extraordinary Rendition” were engaged in combat against forces of the United States in Afghanistan.  Some were seriously wounded but extreme measures were taken to keep them alive.  Some of the same persons were also involved in planning for the 9/11 attack.  Some were very high level members of Al Qaeda.

However this is largely irrelevant.  The 9/11 Commission Report revealed that what happened that day had many antecedents that were overlooked, ignored, not acted on quickly enough by the United States government to change the outcome.  However if the United States were really interested in preventing another 9/11kind of attack, which the former vice president is still obsessing about, it really didn’t have to declare a “War on Terror” or start a war between civilizations.  All the Federal Government really had to do was close its borders and prevent those who wanted to commit harmful, terrorist acts, Al Qaeda, for example, from entering the country in the first place and hunting down the existence on any existing Al Qaeda cells that were already here.

This is a job for the FBI and ATF.  Those arrested for plotting terrorist acts in the United States should have been indicted in Federal Court and placed on trial so the whole world could see what they did and why they did it. Who could have sympathy for them?  What should have happened is essentially something similar to what happened to the Nazis at Nuremburg.  If found guilty by a jury, they should have been placed for life in a so-called “Supermax” Federal Prison.   These are not pleasant places to be in.

Nevertheless following 9/11, it would have been difficult to convince the people of the United States that a military response of some sort against those responsible for it wasn’t called for.  Thus defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan and an effort to kill or capture the person most closely identified with the attack, Osama Bin Laden, took place.  In Defending Afghanistan Revisited, I pointed out the many mistakes that were made by high level persons of the United States military in the campaign.  Anyone reading it will see that Osama Bin Laden was there for the taking if the United States military had been willing to commit adequate forces to do so instead of farming the operation on the high ground out to people with close associations with those in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As a result, Osama Bin Laden, injured perhaps in the U.S. Air Force bombing campaign, but in the end just walked out. 

So the opportunity was blown completely by Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush as they decided an invasion of Iraq was called for – a country with no substantiated connection to 9/11 except in the hysterical and paranoid mind of the former vice president.  UN Weapons Inspectors were there and reported finding no WMD or the capacity of developing nuclear weapons.  American military forces found nothing even being designed for this purpose in the past 6 years.  But Cheney persisted and persisted in this delusion which seems to prevail to this day and must be part of his daily conceptual generation of self.

I really went into this in far greater detail in The Inward Circle, but the bottom line remains, no WMD were ever found, Iraq was certainly not a threat to North America and the tragedy there is one of the great ones in human history.  Now the government of Iraq, the one whose existence the United States says brought democracy to the Middle East and will help spread freedom and democracy throughout the region, simply wants the United States to leave.   And the result of all of this has focused the critical commentary of the world on the United States instead of those who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attack.  How could anyone mess this up so badly?

Return to the issue of torture.  Read about what happened to those subjected to extraordinary rendition.  There is just one question:  what could anyone hope to gain by performing this on people regardless of what they may have done?  And that is the subject of concern, in spite of how bad it was, nothing of substance was gained from it except to make the United States a country harboring war criminals. 

The U.S. government has failed more than one would like to know to protect the public from situations that it knew - or should have known - could lead to tragic loss of life. In many cases, unless something actually causes an incident, it isn’t a safety issue.  That’s how things have worked at NASA with the space shuttle and Apollo 1, so it is hardly a shock that the same methods are found in other places as well.  When a Safety Culture is in place however, an organization can manage risks and prevent accidents, mistakes and disasters.

The confidential President's Daily Brief (PDB) for August 6, 2001 contained a two-page section entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," and refers to possible hijacking attempts by Osama bin Laden disciples and the existence of about 70 FBI investigations into alleged al-Qaeda cells operating within the United States. The August 6 PDB was presented to Bush while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The digest is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, an official from which briefs the president on the report's contents.   

Condoleezza Rice later testified that this was only historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information.   Really - that would be a short view of history I would say.  And it is evading the issue, it doesn’t matter how old the information was, the real question is what were people doing about it.

From the viewpoint of the president, apparently not much.

The book's [The One Percent Doctrin] opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now.''

Obviously an attitude problem existed with this person, so let's look at civil aviation and see how incidents are treated there.  In the United States, the Federal agency responsible for investigating transportation accidents of all kinds, determining causes and making recommendations designed to prevent events with the same antecedents from occurring in the future is the National Transportation Safety Board or NTSB.  Sometimes these investigations span years and more than one incident.  The rudder issues with the Boeing 737 are an example.   

The NTSB has no enforcement powers though; that is the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration.  In a real world situation, sometimes it would be very expensive for airlines and the aircraft industry to immediately implement the safety requirements set by the NTSB.  So it is common for the FAA to give the industries a certain amount of time to incorporate the safety recommendations that NTSB investigations may require.  Sometimes these recommendations are procedural and are related to airline or aircraft operations.  Other times they are design defects in the aircraft or spacecraft.  At times during NASA's existence, it seems to have perpetrated or accepted things that fall into both categories.  

The NTSB does follow up on its safety findings and issues progress reports.  Phrases like "unacceptable response" or "improvements languish" are often found in these reports. 

This is from a highly interesting article on safety issues the NTSB and FAA are working on.

NTSB Member Deborah Hersman pointed out that the FAA is recording three operational errors each day, and one severe operational error every nine days. "I think one severe high- risk event every nine days warrants a higher priority, and to provide direct warning to pilots," she said.

NTSB investigations always have an element of human tragedy and yet it is exceedingly rare for them not to find the specific cause(s) of an accident.  I now want to briefly look at NASA's history in putting humans into space.  

Putting human beings into space is a dangerous and complex procedure.  Nevertheless, the physics was understood since the early 20th Century.  Developing the technology was more difficult and there wasn't a serious effort made  until the 1950s.  Both the Soviet Union and the United States were able to put satellites into earth orbit by the late 1950s.  The "rocket science" knowledge to send humans beyond earth orbit was not particular difficult and the Saturn 5 rocket performed flawlessly in sending Americans to the moon.  Today the avionics used seem very primitive and one wonders how they ever accomplished it. 

The space shuttle is a more complex vehicle but its design is a product of the 1970s.  In less that 150 launches, there have been two incidents of loss of vehicle and crew.  Needless to say, there were investigations.  The Challenger incident has been well documented and can be found in many places.  Preventing the disaster would have been simple, it should never have been launched in the conditions it was in at the time the launch occurred. 

The loss of the Columbia was somewhat different but reflects the same absence of a true Safety Culture inherent in NASA.  Since all launches are recorded, video analysis immediately revealed that a chunk of frozen material fell off of the external fuel tank and hit the leading edge of the left wing of the orbiter and damaging its heat shielding.  This "hit by frozen foam" was not an unusual event on launches and obviously it had never caused an accident before.  However NASA engineers expressed the opinion in emails that, after video review, in this case it could have damaged the wing so severely to make a safe reentry into the earth's atmosphere impossible.  The result can be seen in the Kirtland Image which is attached to this story. 

However their expert cautionary warning was ignored by the bureaucratic decision makers in NASA.  This information is contained in the 6 volume CAIB Report.   As a result of the investigation, persons found their careers ended because of the decisions that were made.  

In my career as a Technical Architect, creating a Safety Culture was synonymous with quality.  There existed several power point presentations that I frequently used to make the characteristics of a corporate culture that put safety and quality as it primary concern.  Such a culture has these fundamental characteristics:

• Informed – managers should know what is going on in their organisation and the workforce should be willing to report their own errors and near misses;

 • Wary – the organisation and its constituent individuals should be on the look out for the unexpected, maintaining a high degree of vigilance;

• Just – the organisation should operate a ‘no blame’ culture within the constraint that some actions can be agreed by all to be totally unacceptable and worthy of approbation;

• Flexible – such organisations can operate according to the demands, so they can provide both high tempo and routine modes of operation and can change when required by circumstances;

• Learning – organisations should be ready to learn in order to improve and be capable of implementing what needs to be done to reform.

Successful organizations know that this is a means to an end, namely organizational achievement and the inverse of failure.  I've always found this to be a highly desirable goal but it can only be fully accomplished in gradual steps. Everyone has to participate and organizations that stress cooperation rather than competition will find this much easier to create and maintain.  And what that does is permit an organization to operate within a narrower margin of error.

Realizing that mistakes are accidents and accidents diminish productivity is a beginning.  Adopt these attitudes and a true Safety Culture may result.  The indications are that the tragic loss of Challenger and Columbia has resulted in a Safety Culture in NASA.  With risks as high as are found in space flight, it simply must exist.  Fortunately the space shuttle has only a few missions left and will be replaced with a system that should be safer and more capable for space exploration.  This was NASA's purpose in the beginning.

Here I have simply explored how mistakes happen, what attitudes lead to mistakes, and what the consequences can be in high risk activities.  This is only prerequisite.  I may return to this subject at a later date. 

The image you see shows a place on the small and fragile planet we all live on.  Presently at least anyone can go to such locations and see them for one’s self.  In other words, for the moment they still belong to everyone. 

If one accepts that concept, it follows that in a so-called democratic society like the United States, individuals can vote for the person or party they feel that best represents and protects them.  Moreover they  can organize their efforts with people who share their viewpoint and seek to obtain political power to better their collective lives. 

For a democracy to work though, everyone has to vote.  And that has been a weakness of democracy in America.  The people who aren't "Already Wealthy" far outnumber those who are.  So there is something there that could be exploited by the cleaver, which is definitely better than being exploited themselves.  However the "Already Wealthy" will do just about anything - including acts of violence - to subvert this process.  Examples are efforts to intimidate people from voting, summarily declaring them ineligible to vote, and in some cases even stopping the orderly counting of the vote.  This is how much power they have and how they will deploy it to wage class warfare in their interests.  In the past it has been far worse.  The ugly brutality of racism in the southern United States engenders nightmares you don't want to have. 

But obtaining political power is a method, the method, to reverse this assembly line moving wealth h to the “Already Wealthy.” You can't really change anything by obtaining wealth.  Political organization with the intent of grabbing political power is the only way it really can be done. 

Sadly the class war has been reversed only occasionally.  In the century just ended, one thinks of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.  The New Deal went as far as it could and it really preserved capitalism by introducing a public sector into the American economy.  The ideas that implemented this were those of John Maynard Keynes who believed that the government that collects taxes should do something other than build monuments and battleships.   It should also create projects that contribute to the Common Good. 

These endeavors accomplished things like bringing electricity (Hydro electricity) to all parts of the country, building Interstate Highways, libraries, schools in the places that previously didn’t even have electricity.   The interesting thing about the public sector is that it could devote resources, spend money that at a particular moment in time it may not have.  Such spending, however, can stimulate economic growth.  So it is really something special but largely absent during the past 8 years. 

It also developed nuclear weapons, sent Americans to the moon and waged a cold war that eventually made the United States the world’s only superpower.   As it turned out, this was not an altogether enviable identity.   

But the American economy that accomplished this was generally productive and stimulated economic growth and rising income for the middle parts of the not “Already Wealthy” class through the second half of the previous century.  There was still enormous poverty that existed in a culture of historical poverty.  This was mostly an inherited economic condition as well.   There was nothing opaque about this.  It was easy to find, one just had to go to the right places.  It had and still has many of the characteristics of a Cast System. 

And nothing much was ever done about it, the poverty is still there and it has even moved into the major urban areas.  Poverty and homelessness have a lot in common but it is possible to have some kind of home, four walls and a roof, and still be living solidly in poverty.   Thinking of it as living in a place like San Quentin might be helpful, e.g., you would have walls and a roof.

So what does this all mean?  Let’s draw a few conclusions.

Wealth in America is largely inherited and passed from generation to generation.

Poverty in America is largely inherited and passed from generation to generation. 

Each of these constructs has historical antecedents which are readily identifiable.   Race, ethnicity, geography are examples; there is a much higher incidence of poverty in the rural southeast than one finds in say Embarcadero Center in San Francisco.

In addition:

Wealth and poverty are maintained and managed by class warfare.

Class warfare is waged and won through the acquisition and deployment of political power.

Keynesian economic principles, if applied, will generally produce economic growth in all sectors of the economy.

This growth in the economy will occur in the not "Already Wealthy" segments of the society but will hardly threaten the overwhelming affluence of the "Already Wealthy." 

What this is really about though is the concept of progress, what engenders progress and what hinders it.  This implies causality and is a topic that German Philosopher Immanuel Kant dealt with in Critique of Pure Reason.  One of Kant’s issues was that events perceived in time do not inherently imply cause and effect.  One only perceives a succession of events, it is not clear whether one perceived event was a direct antecedent of another.  To go beyond this one needs a point of view as for example Copernicus did when he concluded that the objects in the sky that were observable (sun, moon, visible planets, stars, etc.) did not exist in a circling globe with the earth at the center but were rather moving independently and in the case of the sun, from the viewpoint of those on Earth, the sun was at the center.  The acceptance of this paradigm has almost totally been adopted and perceived as progress from the widely held earth-centric view of the universe that preceded it.  In other words:

Kant's critical philosophytakes into account the position of the knower of the world in general and reveals its impact on the structure of his/her known world.  

The pertinent question then becomes what should be done with obsolete concepts that invoke a point of view that is no longer accepted as adequate.  Essentially what science has done is discard such concepts.  And that is what should be done with ideology that opposes improving the lives of not just the “Already Wealthy” but everyone.  Here is why: it is corrupt, it is not inclusive, it is not progressive (quite the opposite, it is reactionary) and it should be discarded.   Is so doing, how can progress and a strategy for it be connected to political theory?  I would offer this as a starting point:   

The elimination of violence, and the reduction of suppression to the extent required for protecting man and animals from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane society. Such a society does not yet exist; progress toward it is perhaps more than before arrested by violence and suppression on a global scale.

While it has not historically been the case, this standard must apply to everyone and should not be hindered by an inadequate or invalid ideological front, an ongoing litany of  effects without any causes, lacking any antecedents but certainly overflowing with greed and exclusionary ideology.  Based on what we know of Christ's life on earth and what it stood for, do you really think Christ would hang around with the “Already Wealthy”, do you really think Christ would choose them?  

One wonders.  The horrible political failures of the past 8 years (there was no progress, just a massive retrograding of all things moral and good), we are still experiencing the fin de siècle of the 20th Century, the end of an era most notably characterized by war, destruction and the potential for destruction at levels unprecedented in any historical context.  In the conclusions of One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse wrote that “Nothing indicates that it will be a good end.”

This is still true, nothing has significantly changed since that was written.  Indeed, contention for the earth’s resources has intensified and grown as has the lethality of weapons of mass destruction.   However the ability for people to interact, share ideas, establish dialogues, participate in efforts to help each other live has also grown.  So the game is not yet over, chances for changing the existing social order still exist; however time for this to occur is still running out.  Failing to attack false and repressive ideologies for what they are – indeed giving them prominence and legitimacy – is not going to help.

Finally there are simple things that could be done to improve the lives and living conditions of middle-class and working people.  Here is a list of specific ideas.  From my experience in the corporate culture they are certainly novel and unfulfilled.

Every person will have both a voice and a vote in managing their workplace, together with all other workers who work together to produce their good or service.

Management authority will flow from the bottom up instead of from the top down.

Workers will elect their supervisors and managers, their fellow workers they recognize as the most experienced and capable in the work they do. If they fail to manage the workplace correctly, the workers who voted them in can vote them out and delegate the responsibility to someone else.

Workers in each industry — such as the different branches of manufacturing, communication, agriculture, education, transportation, distribution, and so on — will elect representatives from each industry to coordinate and manage each industry on the local, regional and national levels. They will elect their reps to a new national Congress of representatives from all industries to coordinate and manage the economy as a whole.

Working Democracy combines grassroots local control at the single workplace level with representative democracy for each higher level of industrial management to ensure the entire economy runs smoothly and efficiently.

Working Democracy is more efficient because workers manage their own work and can assess every day the effectiveness of the way it is done. They can make necessary changes without going through layers of bosses who may not even know or understand what the problem is.

Working Democracy ensures resources are used wisely and aren’t wasted. When people are working for themselves they understand the importance of making the right choices when it comes to what to produce and how to produce it.

Working Democracy directs our science and technology to producing what is most beneficial for the most people, not what is merely most profitable for a few.

Working Democracy means . . .  

JOB SECURITY:

Workers’ jobs are secure only when workers, not employers, own those jobs.

When a handful of people on a corporation’s board of directors can make decisions that destroy the livelihoods of thousands of workers, that’s not democracy.

Working Democracy puts basic economic decisions in the hands of the people.

Nobody is going to vote to eliminate their own source of livelihood unless the community of workers decides they can produce something different that has a greater benefit for the country.

Coordinating their decision with the rest of the economy through their elected industrial management councils and Congress, including the educational division that can teach workers new skills, workers and communities can adjust their jobs to meet the changing needs and wants of society. The livelihoods of workers will be preserved instead of destroyed, with added benefit for society as a whole.

 A SHORTER WORK WEEK:

As technology develops labor productivity rises, which means we can produce more in the same or shorter work time. Technology should therefore enable us to maintain the same or an improved standard of living with a shorter workweek.

Yet the opposite is true today. Americans are working longer and harder than ever, with all the personal and family stress that overwork produces.

Today technology is used by corporations to lower labor costs and increase profits, which harms rather than benefits the majority.

Working Democracy puts control of technology in the hands of the people, to be used for the benefit of people. As our productivity continues to rise, the hours of work required to produce the goods and services we need will continue to fall, and the workweek of each worker can continue to be reduced.

Work will continue to be an important part of our lives in defining who we are as individuals. But it won't be the only part.

With a shorter workweek we’ll have time to develop our other talents and personal potential. We’ll have time to be the best parents, students, friends and neighbors we can be. We will be complete, not one-dimensional, human beings.  

BEST POSSIBLE LIVING STANDARDS:

Working Democracy will provide the incentive to bring people into work instead of throwing them out. The more workers we have to do each job, the fewer hours each worker will need to work each week to get the job done. In this way the unemployment and underemployment that are the cause of poverty can be reduced to a minimum.

Today even full-time workers live in poverty because their jobs pay too little to provide a proper standard of living. Working Democracy will compensate all jobs fully, in the understanding that all useful work is equally necessary to run the economy.

Standard of living is determined not only by the level of personal consumption but also by access to social services: schools, libraries, parks, hospitals and clinics, public transportation.

Today these aspects of the American standard of living are in decline because government budgets are squeezed to help enrich the top wealth holders even more through tax cuts.

Working Democracy will incorporate social services in the overall system of democratic economic planning and administration. The people will decide the amount of resources and labor to allocate for social services. As resources are in fact not scarce but plentiful, social services can be maintained at a high level without unduly cutting back on personal consumption. 

A SAFE ENVIRONMENT:

Having a house and garage full of stuff doesn’t mean a high quality of life if the air is unfit to breathe, the water and land poisoned by industrial pollutants, the Earth’s resources exhausted, and rising temperatures threaten the very future of civilization.

The quality as well as quantity of goods produced must be considered. They should be made to last so they don’t stress the environment by being thrown away and replaced sooner than necessary. This will also reduce energy use and the production of greenhouse gases by reducing overall production levels.

How goods are produced is also critical. The time and resources that minimize industrial pollution and waste must be allocated to ensure we maintain a rational balance between consumption and preserving the environment.

Working Democracy can achieve this balance because production will be to meet the needs of people, and not to sell ever more merchandise for maximum profit through reckless and unplanned growth.

A JUST SOCIETY AND A PEACEFUL WORLD:

Economic exploitation is the underlying injustice that breeds all kinds of other social injustice.

When a few people enrich themselves by taking the lion’s share of the wealth produced by the work of the majority, society is divided into opposing interests and the result is conflict and strife.

Extreme poverty and deprivation exist in an economy capable of producing great wealth. The upper classes and the governments they control in countries throughout the world use fraud and force to suppress the aspirations of their working populations.

Rulers of different countries fight each other for valuable resources such as oil, and for control of markets and trade advantage.

But it is the poor of those countries who do the actual fighting and dying. It is the working people who are caught in the middle of rulers’ wars and suffer the most and gain the least from them.

Working Democracy promotes peace and social justice by eliminating exploitation, because as the Bible says, “Love of money is the root of all evil.”

People will work together as a unified community of workers, with common goals democratically decided by themselves. Every person will have the inalienable right to be a working member of the community and to receive full compensation for the work they contribute to the common effort. No one will have the right to profit and enrich themselves on the backs of the people who produce the wealth.

While exploitation breeds destructive competition, oppression, irrational hatreds and war, Working Democracy promotes intelligent cooperation, social equality and peace.

It may seem that bringing this about will require something as profound as the real Second Coming.   However it shouldn't.  The President and all members of Congress serve under oath.  The oath is to uphold the Constitution and is a commitment to the people of the United States.    It isn't a commitment to the Health Care Industry or any other corporate lobby that makes huge campaign contributions to members of Congress so they will do whatever it takes to enhance the corporate sector, that is, only the corporate sector.  You see they are elected to represent the interests of the people of the United States, not those of corporations, and above all the President, Congress and any others serving the Republic are expected to act in accordance with what is best for the country and ultimately what is best for its citizens.    It may require a display of personal courage to do this but that is what was anticipated.

If the President or any member of Congress is not reelected because of some wacko form of politics devoted to corporate interests whose only goal is increasing bonuses for its directors, history will view them as heroes, as those with the courage to do what was best for the nation in spite of how they were threatened by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and the well financed campaign fronts that represent corporations and suppress truth. 

Those who uphold the oath they took can take solace in how history will record their actions which perhaps represent a short term personal sacrifice, but in the final analysis served the best course for the United States and its citizens.